It wasn’t a great weekend at the box office.

The third “Fifty Shades” installment made just $38 million as audiences and the couple on the screen lost interest in the whole affair. Luckily, “Fifty Shades Freed” didn’t cost too much since it was made simultaneously with its predecessor. And you know that three years from now someone will launch it as a mini series on a TV like platform so Christian Grey and Ana won’t be forgotten. They will just be recycled.

There was overwhelming apathy toward Clint Eastwood’s “15:17 to Paris.” The train didn’t leave the station. Not having stars was a big issue. Also, the linear screenplay killed it. Eastwood experimented, and I liked it (so did a few others) but the audience was impatient. And for the second time this year, we learned a lot about Sacramento. (“Lady Bird” being a more successful tourist promotion for California’s capital.)

The total box office number was grim. The Olympics on TV were an easy attraction to divert from the theater going. Plus, an overall pall hangs over Hollywood right now. Show business is eating itself alive as vicious accusations flying back and forth in every direction. The dirty laundry has been exposed like never before. Did anyone stop to consider the economic consequences? “Who’s next?” is the topic of conversation everywhere. And I don’t mean “who’s next” to get an Oscar? No, “who’s next?” to be ruined, embarrassed, shamed, humiliated, destroyed, ripped to shreds and vanished from society?

At the same time, there’s zero discussion of the Oscars. That’s largely because the Academy prohibits campaigning after nominations are announced. So beginning January 23rd, pretty much all events and socializing stopped. That amounts to about 7 weeks of silence prior to an election. Can you imagine if that were the case in politics? All the hoopla that occurred in November, December, and early January comes to a halt. None of the Oscar movies are having much enthusiasm at the box office, either. By March 4th weekend, even “Black Panther” — which will have a huge opening next Friday– will be history.

Oscar voting begins February 20th and ends on the 27th. Wake up, Academy members. Is it “Three Billboards”? “Shape of Water”? or something… else…

We all like to snicker at the “Fifty Shades of Grey” series. It gets terrible reviews. Right now it’s at 10 on Rotten Tomatoes.

But last night part 3– “Fifty Shades of Freed”– drew $5.6 million in preview showings. That’s roughly what Part 2 did in previews. “Fifty Shades Darker” scored a total worldwide $381 million, $114 million of that in the US. There was no restraining it!

Remember, “Freed” was shot simultaneously with “Darker,” so the costs are way down for this last go round. “Darker” made $21.4 mil on its Thurs-Fri total opening. So we’ll see how the new one has done in the AM. There’s not much out there this weekend as everyone waits for “Black Panther.” Considering how nasty the critics have been (not me) to Clint Eastwood, if “15:17 to Paris” makes anything this weekend, it’s a success. Go see it for yourselves.

A really terrible Hollywood tragedy today: Jill Messick, formerly Rose McGowan’s manager and also an executive producer of several Miramax movies, committed suicide at age 50. She had battled depression for a long time, and was caught in the crossfire in the Harvey Weinstein-McGowan scandal.

Messick executive produced both “She’s All That” and “Frida” at Miramax. But just prior to that she’d been McGowan’s manager, credited with sending her to Weinstein’s suite in Sundance in 1997. It was there that McGowan said she was raped after getting into Weinstein’s hot tub.

Less than ten days ago, on January 30th, Weinstein’s lawyer, Ben Brafman, offered an email Messick had sent regarding this episode. It seemed to exonerate Weinstein  and caused a furor. Brafman said: “In an email to Mr. Weinstein regarding the encounter, Jill Messick says the following, “When we met up the following day, she hesitantly told me of her own accord that during the meeting that night before she had gotten into a hot tub with Mr. Weinstein. She was very clear about the fact that getting into that hot tub was something that she did consensually and that in hindsight it was also something that she regretted having done.”

Messick’s family now says the reveal of the email, and the ensuing bad publicity, was the last straw for her. This is tragic. They wrote in a statement: “Jill was victimized by our new culture of unlimited information sharing and a willingness to accept statement as fact. The speed of disseminating information has carried mistruths about Jill as a person, which she was unable and unwilling to challenge. She became collateral damage in an already horrific story.”

They continued:

“Five years ago, Jill suffered a manic episode. Anyone familiar with bipolar disorder knows that it is a cruel and vicious disease. With the help of doctors, her family and friends, Jill rebounded. Jill had fought to put her life back together. After a long job search, she was in negotiations to run the production division for a new entertainment company.

Seeing her name in headlines again and again, as part of one person’s attempt to gain more attention for her personal cause, along with Harvey’s desperate attempt to vindicate himself, was devastating for her. It broke Jill, who was just starting to get her life back on track.”

Condolences to her family.

EXCLUSIVE:  Shia LaBeouf once told an interviewer that when he was a child star his father’s pet name for him was “Honey Boy.”

Now LaBeouf is making a movie about his childhood and his relationship with his father. It’s called “Honey Boy” and he wrote it himself. His alter ego is called Otis Lort.

This is the description of the movie: “Otis Lort is a 12 year old kid who’s a rising star on television — but his life revolves around his father James, a man with a past so checkered they might as well paint it black. An ex-con, a recovering drug addict, James is an unemployable trainwreck, a narcissist, a terrific conversationalist, but an utterly unreliable father. Ten years later, 22 year old Otis is well on his way to being a trainwreck himself: he’s almost unemployable in the movie industry, he’s diagnosed as suffering from childhood PTSD, & he’s having a hard time preparing himself for the biggest event of his life: the imminent meeting with his father who he hasn’t seen for years.”

There are many weird things here, of course. The screenplay is credited to Shia and to “Otis Lort,” the same name as the character. It’s unclear if Lort is a pseudonym for Shia’s real life father, Jeffrey laBeouf, or Shia, or just an inside joke. In the screenplay, Otis’s father is named James, who is “an ex-Rodeo Clown, an ex-convict with a rape conviction hanging over his head & a long history of drug addiction, alcoholism and narcissism.”

Otis, the character, grows up to age 22 after starring in a children’s TV series– as Shia did in Disney’s “Even Stevens.” He is now “a leading star in big Hollywood films, a professional actor for half his young life. On the set, he is focused and fine-tuned, like an owl statue but in real life he has internalized his father’s anger, insecurity & alcoholism.”

Israeli commercial director Alma Harel is said to be taking this project on. Producers are Brian Kavanaugh and Chris Leggett.

Not one, not two, but three Charles Manson movies are coming. One of them, by Quentin Tarantino, however, is in jeopardy at Sony and may not get made at all.

Mary Harron, whose “I Shot Andy Warhol” is one of the great indie classics (cinematography by Ellen Kuras, Jared Harris in a landmark performane, Lili Taylor OMG good), is making “Charlie Says” with Matt Smith of “Dr. Who” and “The Crown” fame.

Hillary Duff has signed to play Sharon Tate, the late Mrs. Roman Polanski, murdered by the Manson family, in “The Haunting of Sharon Tate.” That one sounds like it’s straight to Lifetime, though.

The third Manson movie is the one from Quentin Tarantino with a $200 million plus budget and loads of stars– Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Tom Cruise– said to be involved.

But now I’m hearing that Sony is having second thoughts because of Tarantino’s double trouble in the press. First there was Uma Thurman’s accusations that her pal, Quentin, allowed her to film a scene in which she was seriously injured for “Kill Bill.” Thurman has back pedaled a bit since this started, and Quentin did a mea culpa, but it’s out there.

Then it was revealed on the Jezebel website that back in 2003, Tarantino told Howard Stern that 13 year old Samantha Geimer “wanted it” when she had sex with Polanski in 1977. Stern– otherwise irreverent– sounds startled on the tape when Tarantino asserts that what Polanski did to Geimer was just statutory rape. “You know all these 13 year old party girls,” Tarantino says.

Tarantino may have to find independent financing for his “Manson” movie at this point, especially if he was planning on depicting the Polanski story. (There’s some idea Cruise would play Polanski, although the Manson-Tate story takes place nine years before the Geimer episode.)

All of this is made possible by Manson himself having the good sense to die last year, clearing the way for lots of movies to be produced about his crazy self without interference.

Don’t believe the mixed or bad reviews coming in early for Clint Eastwood’s “15:17 to Paris.” I saw it tonight, and like A.O. Scott in the New York Times, I found it fascinating and much more complicated than a snarky dismissal.

You know, I’m Jewish and liberal, so “patriotic” and “Christian” aren’t two of the things I warm to in movies necessarily. But Eastwood’s take on these real life heroes is not simplistic. The real life people playing themselves as heroes on the train from Amsterdam to Paris– I was braced for a bad movie. And I will say, it starts slowly and it’s totally not what you expect. Nevertheless, if you’re patient with it, you quickly realize several things.

First of, the real guys are not bad. I’ve seen worse. Compared to Louis CK’s unreleased “I Love You, Daddy,” the acting and writing here is Shakespearean.

Second, Eastwood– as he did in “American Sniper” and “Sully”– lays out their stories and backgrounds objectively. I’m already seeing in some reviews some idea that Eastwood is pushing a religious agenda or whatever. Nonsense. He’s accurately depicting these people. The mothers of the guys are religious– this is what they believe, it’s their right. No one is mocking them or judging them. This is who they are. And kudos to Jenna Fischer and Judy Greer for finding the mothers’ dimensions.

If there’s a problem with “15:17” it’s that it’s almost filmed like cinema verite, certainly as the story unfolds. There’s a lot of exposition and it seems slow. Again, a little patience wouldn’t hurt anyone. Because when the kids’ backstories switch to the main guys, Eastwood finds a groove. Forgive him if the entry seems clunky.

A lot of the movie hands on Spencer Stone, the main hero of the three Sacramento friends. He pushed his real life buddies (Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler) to take this trip with him through Europe when he got time off from the Air Force. By coincidence, I met Stone briefly. After all this happened, and before he made this movie starring as himself, he came to the NY Opening of Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies.” He was very affable. I would never have guessed he could confidently carry himself through a narrative film, reciting dialogue and moving comfortably through scenes. This is quite an accomplishment.

Ditto Skarlatos and Sadler– Sadler, especially, seems like a natural. Eastwood does not suffer fools easily and wouldn’t have proceeded if he weren’t certain they could pull this off. And they do. To help the guys, Clint surrounds them with solid actors– Fischer, Greer, Thomas Lennon. There’s even a little bit from Jaleel White, the once and former Urkel of 80s TV fame. He acquits himself nicely. Eastwood once told me he likes “get up and go” type actors, ones who can snap to and do what he needs. In “15:17” he has amateurs and pros all doing that. He really pulled it off.

I don’t know if “15:17” will one day be considered great art– I consider “Unforgiven” and “Gran Torino” great art– or an interesting experiment. But it’s well worth paying attention to. Eastwood obviously saw a lot in these guys– two of them as children are thought to have ADD, they’re screw ups, etc. And in the end, maybe with prayer, with military training and maturity, they reacted in a moment and made America proud, and themselves proud.

And as for Clint– he’s eighty seven years old. This list of films in his ninth decade is utterly remarkable. This is the sixth movie he’s directed in eight years. Hello? Not all perfect– “Invictus” didn’t thrill me. But overall, there’s an extreme brilliance to his lean, mean execution of stories he knows will resonate in the heartland. Very, very cool.

Read today’s headlines– Kenneth Cole Out at amfAR, Raul Esparza out at Law & Order SVU– click here